CHE90
Jolly Good Fellow
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Looks like you have a choice to make.
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GoldZ
Ramblin' Wreck
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Isn't Sweden taking almost the exact same approach the US did in '09 with H1N1 ? It seems clear at this point (subject to change of course), that Covid is far more contagious and more deadly than H1N1. Considering how 60+ Million in the US alone were infected and 12,400+ died, it would appear Sweden is in trouble, and if the US adopted our '09 response, we would be in trouble extraordinaire--sorry deniers but it's true. There are many other factors involved in Sweden like obesity, age, race, population size, education level, geography, etc., but overall this seems much much worse than H1N1. It's unlikely we knew this at the time in '09, so we apparently just got.....lucky.
Taiwan and S.Korea look like the gold standards on this, Italy and Spain are tragically the big time losers, and the US/UK are somewhere in the middle, but clearly not on the medal stand. Iran may end up in Italy and Spain's league.
On a brighter note, I'm actually starting to believe we may see at least a watered down version of CFB this season! Please don't crap on this possible delusion.
Taiwan and S.Korea look like the gold standards on this, Italy and Spain are tragically the big time losers, and the US/UK are somewhere in the middle, but clearly not on the medal stand. Iran may end up in Italy and Spain's league.
On a brighter note, I'm actually starting to believe we may see at least a watered down version of CFB this season! Please don't crap on this possible delusion.
Deleted member 2897
Guest
I never want to live like Taiwan or South Korea. There are better ways to accomplish the same end.
By the way, did you hear about the recent studies in California and the testing at the Boston homeless shelter? We may very well have had 60 million cases here and not know it.
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We've already told our son there will be no DragonCon this year even if they don't cancel it. There is no way to properly social distance in that environment and it isn't until Phase 3 (which aren't happening for probably many months) that that type of gathering is allowed.
First time in 5 years my son will miss it.
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On a per capita basis Sweden's deaths right now would translate into over 50K confirmed deaths in the US.
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Read the Stanford study and an interview with the author this morning. But the author was very specific in his interview about what this meant and that you can't use this yet for any sort of planning until more research is done. Even with the adjusted rate of infection as found by the study, only 3% of the population has coronavirus – that means 97% does not. This largely is in line with recent testing in Austria and Germany which suggested 1-3% have been infected. One other really important note that the author of the study brings up - we don't know yet whether having antibodies confers immunity and if so for how long.
From a news article on the study
The study confirms the widely-held belief that far more people than originally thought have been infected with the coronavirus, said Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC Berkeley who was not involved in the study, but it doesn’t mean the shelter-in-place order will be lifted any time soon.
“The idea this would be a passport to going safely back to work and getting us up and running has two constraints: we do not know if antibodies protect you and for how long, and a very small percentage of the population even has antibodies,” he said.
Some responses from the author of the study in an interview
What does this mean for immunity in California?
We’re not “immune” in California, because we’re already starting to get antibody tests, and we don’t have a high rate of antibody prevalence in just the few tests that have been run. In the coming weeks, we plan to use our own Stanford tests to look at antibody levels, and we’re just not going to see very high levels. As devastating as this epidemic is, around the world we estimate that about 5% or less of people have actually been infected.
So how do we move forward?
With a disease like this, you probably need somewhere on the order of 60% or more people to have immunity in order to prevent an epidemic. Right now, if we’re at less than 5%; you would need at least ten- to twelve-fold that level. The only way to get there is to vaccinate people or else have horrific transmissions, and we can’t do the latter. So we’re going to have to continue some social distancing efforts.
Is there a way to transition to a system that is less restrictive than our current sheltering, but allows us to avoid those horrific transmissions?
Absolutely. There’s a lot that can be done. We won’t be back to where we were before this right away. But we will be able to start staggering work hours, either by days, people working from home certain days a week, staggering shifts, other mitigation efforts, making sure people are socially distant. And then we need really rigorous testing and contact tracing.
Cases do start tapering off eventually, but what we need to be careful of is when a second wave comes along, which it will, keep it more like a ripple rather than a wave. And extinguish those small outbreaks quickly by identifying infected individuals and making sure their contacts isolate and don’t transmit to others. That’s what we need to get everyone back to work. And over time, we can start staging out less and less restrictive containment practices.
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I decided to go back and do some reading on how flu deaths are calculated in the US (knowing that the number reported is not actual death certificates). The CDC has a good high level explantion of what they do and then I went back and read 2 of the research papers of how some of the factors that go into the model and calculates the flu deaths work.
FWIW, if you want to compare COVID19 deaths to flu deaths based on death certificates then the number of flu death certificates for the US through Jan20th was about 8,200. That is the most comparable number to use. When people use numbers like 50,000 that is the modeling estimates that are much higher.
One research paper suggests that flu deaths are undercounted by about 2.1X in children under 18, 3.1X in 18-64 and 5.2X in 65+.
It is 2 years before the CDC puts out official flu death numbers. They do an estimate after 1 year and a final estimate after 2 years. The model gives them a median (which is the official number) and then a 95% confidence interval which provides the lower and upper bounds.
The last official final estimate is for 2016-17 season where the median is 38,000 with a confidence interval of 29,000 to 61,000.
In most years the number of official flu death certificates is under 10,000.
So looking at COVID19 the actual numbers are already around 4X higher than this year's flu actual numbers and climbing rapidly.
Two years from now backend modeling will be used to come up with an official estimate and it will be considerably higher than the numbers we are seeing right now. Given how high deaths per day have spiked in places it is being tracked there will be a large revision upward.
New York City is reporting that roughly 200 residents were dying each day outside of hospitals and nursing homes. That’s compared with about 35 per day on average between 2013 and 2017, according to city records.
In Detroit, authorities responded to more than 150 “dead person observed” calls in the first 10 days of April. It was around 40 during the same period for the past three years, according to city 911 call data.
Even with the change to how case counts and death counts are defined (and just because the definition changed doesn't mean states automatically changed their reporting) we are still likely underreporting deaths by a power factor. This is just my opinion but looking at how we handle the flu i would expect the final official death number to be at least twice as high and more likely 3-4 times higher than whatever the official death count is this year.
Finally, this tweet does a great job of showing why the official death count numbers are likely going to be way higher than what people are thinking of right now. The public IHME model (Which FWIW was designed to help hospitals in resource demands, not forecast deaths, it just provides that) has so far been totally underestimating the curve after peak is reached. Real data of deaths after peak in most countries are well outside the top of the confidence interval of the model. Basically, it takes a lot longer for the death counts to recede than to ramp up. This is something I saw in an article with epidemeologists. This believe that model is completely wrong in terms of the tail based on what they are seeing in actuality.
FWIW, if you want to compare COVID19 deaths to flu deaths based on death certificates then the number of flu death certificates for the US through Jan20th was about 8,200. That is the most comparable number to use. When people use numbers like 50,000 that is the modeling estimates that are much higher.
One research paper suggests that flu deaths are undercounted by about 2.1X in children under 18, 3.1X in 18-64 and 5.2X in 65+.
It is 2 years before the CDC puts out official flu death numbers. They do an estimate after 1 year and a final estimate after 2 years. The model gives them a median (which is the official number) and then a 95% confidence interval which provides the lower and upper bounds.
The last official final estimate is for 2016-17 season where the median is 38,000 with a confidence interval of 29,000 to 61,000.
In most years the number of official flu death certificates is under 10,000.
So looking at COVID19 the actual numbers are already around 4X higher than this year's flu actual numbers and climbing rapidly.
Two years from now backend modeling will be used to come up with an official estimate and it will be considerably higher than the numbers we are seeing right now. Given how high deaths per day have spiked in places it is being tracked there will be a large revision upward.
New York City is reporting that roughly 200 residents were dying each day outside of hospitals and nursing homes. That’s compared with about 35 per day on average between 2013 and 2017, according to city records.
In Detroit, authorities responded to more than 150 “dead person observed” calls in the first 10 days of April. It was around 40 during the same period for the past three years, according to city 911 call data.
Even with the change to how case counts and death counts are defined (and just because the definition changed doesn't mean states automatically changed their reporting) we are still likely underreporting deaths by a power factor. This is just my opinion but looking at how we handle the flu i would expect the final official death number to be at least twice as high and more likely 3-4 times higher than whatever the official death count is this year.
Finally, this tweet does a great job of showing why the official death count numbers are likely going to be way higher than what people are thinking of right now. The public IHME model (Which FWIW was designed to help hospitals in resource demands, not forecast deaths, it just provides that) has so far been totally underestimating the curve after peak is reached. Real data of deaths after peak in most countries are well outside the top of the confidence interval of the model. Basically, it takes a lot longer for the death counts to recede than to ramp up. This is something I saw in an article with epidemeologists. This believe that model is completely wrong in terms of the tail based on what they are seeing in actuality.
LongforDodd
LatinxBreakfastTacos
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Not trying to sidetrack this discussion but what does anyone know about the GT professor who is supposed to be a nationally recognized VIP in statistical modeling (?) and the Feds are trying to get her to work for them but because of her alleged fraud in a recent grant application, GT has locked her out of getting her hands on 200 computers that has her work on it.
I apologize if it was discussed earlier in this thread or somewhere else but I just came to this thread this morning trying to learn stuff.
I apologize if it was discussed earlier in this thread or somewhere else but I just came to this thread this morning trying to learn stuff.
Deleted member 2897
Guest
“You had 1 job.” Sad.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/c...ayed-rollout-of-coronavirus-tests/ar-BB12Q90W
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/c...ayed-rollout-of-coronavirus-tests/ar-BB12Q90W
684Bee
Helluva Engineer
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Clearly they need more funding. An 11.1 billion dollar budget just isn’t enough.
Sadly, there will be some who seriously claim it’s due to lack of funding.
Supersizethatorder-mutt
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I remember reading about that somewhere, but when I try to Google it, I come up with a woman (Joy Laskar) and a man (Maysam Ghovanloo), and I can't tell if either of them is the one you are referring to. There may be someone else.
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More like about 3-4 weeks. It takes time to circulate and incubate. Wait until around Memorial Day, wouldn't be surprised to see cases spike again starting around that time.
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Eva Lee
Boaty1
Helluva Engineer
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I find it interesting how little discussion I’ve seen about the economy in this thread. Where are studies on the potential impact this is having on it? How in the hell do we gauge success without that metric. If we save a 100k lives here, but trigger a depression, I think we would have failed.
LibertyTurns
Banned
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My county got close to giving DeSantis the finger & leaving restaurants, etc open. Now they’re giving him the finger & keeping the beaches closed. Weird politics these days.
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Not that it is going to matter, but it is somwhat ironic that there is not a single state that would quality to re-open right now under the guidelines released 2 days ago and will probably be close to 0 that would quality by May 1.
FWIW, here is an article on what some early states are talking about in terms of loosening restrictions.
These are very tentative steps
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/18/some-states-taking-steps-to-reopen-193611
Since the Federal Government is largely abandoning its responsibility to manage the crisis in the US, you can expect most Governors to take things very slowly since they know the Federal Government and some others will try to blame them for any missteps.
FWIW, here is an article on what some early states are talking about in terms of loosening restrictions.
These are very tentative steps
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/18/some-states-taking-steps-to-reopen-193611
Since the Federal Government is largely abandoning its responsibility to manage the crisis in the US, you can expect most Governors to take things very slowly since they know the Federal Government and some others will try to blame them for any missteps.
GoldZ
Ramblin' Wreck
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Yeah, there are better ways in retrospect. Little testing/tracking = no better way right now.
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This is going to be partly political so if it needs to be moved I have no issue with the mods doing that.
The first briefing for White House and Congressional Leaders on the Coronovirus epidemic was on Jan 3rd according to the head of Heath and Human Services Alex Azar.
So our leaders - both Republican and Democrat basically knew what was likely coming at the beginning of the year. The intital talks about it below that level started back in early December by US Intelligence Services.
I was reading an article in Foreign Policy magazine this morning. Pretty much every daily intelligence briefing starting in January was headlined by Coronavirus and the briefings consistently said that Coronavirus was the greatest threat to America currently in the world. By mid-January US Intelligence sources were telling White House and Congressional leaders that China was seriously underreporting how big an issue it was. So trying to say our Government was blindsided is inaccurate. By mid-January it was already known this was incredibly serious and dangerous.
Unfortunately our political leaders either ignored it (Democrats) or belittled it (Republicans). By the late January Peter Navarro had written his first letter to White House officials saying you needed to start taking this seriously or you could be looking at 600K deaths and 2+ trillion in lost economic activity.
Over the first 8 weeks after Jan 3, only one action was taken by the US Government, the travel ban from China (note that when that was announced on Feb 2 - 38 other countries had already instituted travel bans that were as or more strict). By then it was already too late - 340,000 people had traveled form China to the US between December and February. Another 43,000 Americans would return home from China after the ban was put in place and almost none of them were checked to see if they were carrying any symptoms.
On Feb 25th, Dr. Messonier, head of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiritory Diseases states that community spread is already taking place and we should start implementing mitigation strategies. (There were 14 confirmed cases in the US at this point). By this time Peter Navarro had written his second letter (which included President Trump on the distribution list) even more forcefully arguing the steps needed to ba taken.
Basically the lights were blinking red all over, our Governmental leaders chose to ignore those warnings and that is the single biggest reason we are in this mess now. When a post-mortem is conducted in a couple of years our leaders are going to look really bad.
IMO, Both the death toll and the economic toll from this worldwide is going to be staggering. Right now the estimates are for GDP to be down 2.9% for 2020. I believe that is way to rosy. it is much more likely to be twice that. I underestimated the damage from the 2008 Financial Crisis. This one is going to be considerably worse than that. That was caused by human greed and hubris (some of the Wall Street firms knew their packaged derivatives were crap - they were actually shorting them in the markets), this is caused by a natural virus that has overrun the world. Due to the global economy it is likely to take longer to recover from this, than anybody realizes. China is having a really difficult time trying to re-start their economy. First they are using fewer employees ans second, they continue to have outbreaks that force them to shut down parts of the country. over 20% of US jobs are dependent on Global trade, that is not coming back anytime soon, certainly not in 2020.
As a final FYI, the current IHME estimate is 60K deaths, we are likely to hit confirmed deaths of 60K by mid-May at the latest, if the death rates don't drop quickly we could hit that by May 1.
The first briefing for White House and Congressional Leaders on the Coronovirus epidemic was on Jan 3rd according to the head of Heath and Human Services Alex Azar.
So our leaders - both Republican and Democrat basically knew what was likely coming at the beginning of the year. The intital talks about it below that level started back in early December by US Intelligence Services.
I was reading an article in Foreign Policy magazine this morning. Pretty much every daily intelligence briefing starting in January was headlined by Coronavirus and the briefings consistently said that Coronavirus was the greatest threat to America currently in the world. By mid-January US Intelligence sources were telling White House and Congressional leaders that China was seriously underreporting how big an issue it was. So trying to say our Government was blindsided is inaccurate. By mid-January it was already known this was incredibly serious and dangerous.
Unfortunately our political leaders either ignored it (Democrats) or belittled it (Republicans). By the late January Peter Navarro had written his first letter to White House officials saying you needed to start taking this seriously or you could be looking at 600K deaths and 2+ trillion in lost economic activity.
Over the first 8 weeks after Jan 3, only one action was taken by the US Government, the travel ban from China (note that when that was announced on Feb 2 - 38 other countries had already instituted travel bans that were as or more strict). By then it was already too late - 340,000 people had traveled form China to the US between December and February. Another 43,000 Americans would return home from China after the ban was put in place and almost none of them were checked to see if they were carrying any symptoms.
On Feb 25th, Dr. Messonier, head of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiritory Diseases states that community spread is already taking place and we should start implementing mitigation strategies. (There were 14 confirmed cases in the US at this point). By this time Peter Navarro had written his second letter (which included President Trump on the distribution list) even more forcefully arguing the steps needed to ba taken.
Basically the lights were blinking red all over, our Governmental leaders chose to ignore those warnings and that is the single biggest reason we are in this mess now. When a post-mortem is conducted in a couple of years our leaders are going to look really bad.
IMO, Both the death toll and the economic toll from this worldwide is going to be staggering. Right now the estimates are for GDP to be down 2.9% for 2020. I believe that is way to rosy. it is much more likely to be twice that. I underestimated the damage from the 2008 Financial Crisis. This one is going to be considerably worse than that. That was caused by human greed and hubris (some of the Wall Street firms knew their packaged derivatives were crap - they were actually shorting them in the markets), this is caused by a natural virus that has overrun the world. Due to the global economy it is likely to take longer to recover from this, than anybody realizes. China is having a really difficult time trying to re-start their economy. First they are using fewer employees ans second, they continue to have outbreaks that force them to shut down parts of the country. over 20% of US jobs are dependent on Global trade, that is not coming back anytime soon, certainly not in 2020.
As a final FYI, the current IHME estimate is 60K deaths, we are likely to hit confirmed deaths of 60K by mid-May at the latest, if the death rates don't drop quickly we could hit that by May 1.
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both those countries had gone through SARS and MERS and so had learned lessons to prepare for this one. Lessons that Western countries including the US ignored.
Taiwan for instance activated its emergency protocols before they had their first positive case. SK as soon as they had their first break out went into their extremely fast test and trace protocols and quarantined all those who had it or had come into contact with someone who had it.
The only way to avoid a large scale breakout is to get in front of it. You have to have testing ready to go, you have to ramp up resources immediately to test people and get lab results. You have to ramp up resources to do tracing before it spreads too far. And then if you do all that right, you have to quarantine the positive tests and all the traces for multiple weeks.
Think about that after the Chinese travel ban 43,000 Americans returned home from China. Almost none of them were tested. I believe they were told to self-quarantine for 14 days, but how many do you think did that. Knowing the American mindset i would guess less than 10%. And self-quarntine also means staying quarantined from anyone who would leave where you live - your spouse, your kids, your roommates.
If you are not willing to do that, then when you get a really bad, easily transmittable virus - where we are today is the result.
A little bit of pain on the front end can save alot of pain on the backend. But humans have a tendency to want to avoid pain and avoid making hard decisions so they will put it off as long as they can, often making it far worse down the road.
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